Cluster Map

April 11, 2006

Affect Storms

Early in my carer I treated a man who had significant issues with hyper-sensitivity. He felt easily criticized and took offence easily. At the same time he was extremely insensitive to the feelings of others and was typically completely unaware of how he hurt the people who cared about him. After a couple of months of treatment, I thought our therapeutic alliance was strong enough to tolerate a more pointed interpretation. In the middle of a session in which he was bitterly complaining about his current girlfriend, that she was mean to him because she kept complaining he was insensitive to her, I ventured the comment that perhaps there were something he had done that she misinterpreted as critical of her. I thought this would be an opening for some self-reflection by my patient; I was wrong. After a moments silence, he exploded at me. How could I be so stupid as to think he was insensitive; if I agreed with her why did he even bother talking to me about it. He was loud and insistent. He barely took a breath and did not allow me to intervene. I had nothing useful to say to him and nothing I said could have nay value. He was enraged and distressed.

I realized that there was indeed nothing I could say that would calm the turbulence; all I could do was sit tight and wait for the storm to pass. When a hurricane hits, you don't continue trying to renovate the house, you batten down the hatches and wait it out. (Sorry for the mixed metaphors.)

As time went on we were able to understand what had triggered the "Affect Storm." When I made my extremely mild critical comment, it threatened to take down the entire edifice of self-esteem that he had constructed to protect himself from deep-seated feelings of worthlessness and despair. Criticism form people he didn't care about bounced off his fortifications, but he had let me inside the front door, inside his defenses, and a criticism from me shook the foundations. He felt a moment of pure terror and then went on the counter-attack as if his life depended on it; in a way, at that time, his psychic integrity did depend on counter-attacking. In retrospect, the episode proved to be quite educational to both of us; at the time it was quite harrowing and distressing.

I was reminded of "Affect Storms" by some of the responses to my post yesterday.

Yesterday's post on The Logic of Conflict was linked at Salon Blogging from the Right and attracted a fair amount of attention from commenters. The point I was trying to make in my post was that for some large, though indeterminate, segment of the population, the image of Islam has devolved to the simplistic meme that Islam=Atrocity. (A point I explored at The Reavers of Islam as well.) I also suggested that the image of the West in Islam is equally simplistic and distorted. In my last paragraph, I suggested that the Iraq war represented our best hope for a peaceful outcome between Islam and the West:

Sadly, the best hope for a peaceful outcome between the West and Islam, that Iraq could become a beacon of Democracy in the corrupt sea of despotism throughout the Islamic Middle east, is fading, destroyed by the Islamic fanatics, the mainstream Arab governments and government controlled press, and by the MSM and left-wing elites who have struggled to strangle the nascent democracy in its crib. Even if Iraq eventually has a functioning liberal Democracy, that outcome is too far off in the future to change minds in the short term.

I fully admit that I omitted a number of other contributing factors, including the various errors that the Bush administration has made and various military blunders and missteps. I did not discuss the reasons we went to war, the disastrous predictions by so many that did not come true, and that the current trajectory is positive. (Take a look at The Opinionated Bastard for a recap of various metrics in the war and this post from Bill Roggio on the political maneuvering going on.) None of this means the violence will end anytime soon, but as long as we maintain our commitment, the Iraqis have a better than even chance of succeeding and changing the dynamic of the entire region.

There are, in any post, going to be a number of points where the post can be questioned, and this post was no exception. One of the several Alans who commented is a frequent commenter who rarely agrees with me but makes comments which invite reasoned responses and usually gets them. (Alan's comments often deserve an entire post in response.) His comment to the post raised some excellent questions and deserves some attention. Raw Data brings me to ask for succumbing to a form of reductionism that hurts my case and deserves more careful attention (though I can't guarantee I won't do it again; sadly, the human mind is best at making Manichean distinctions, rather than discerning nuanced shades of gray.)

A number of commenters tried to engage the "arguments" that the Angry Cadre had left, but to little avail. The problem is that the subject for most of the commenters is closed. Bush lied, the war has been mismanaged, there were no WMD, etc. All these tropes have been endlessly repeated by many in the media and many politicians and public figures, and are not up for discussion; they are accepted as revealed truths and no amount of evidence to the quandary will even evoke an acknowledgment that other interpretations of the data are plausible or likely. Which raises the question of why so many felt the need to make such comments. Certainly, the comments, many of which were overtly insulting and obnoxious, were not designed to convince. They were also clearly not designed to invite discussion. Almost none of the comments referred to the subject of the post, the inevitability of further conflict based on the hardening and devolution of images of the opposing sides. The conclusion I arrive at is that most of the negative comments represented a type of Affect Storm.

Affect Storms are triggered by intense anxiety, often over existential questions. The left (apologies to Raw Data for my shorthand; here I am including that 20% of the population that is overtly Communist, Socialist, Progressive, and Ultra-liberal; they are over-represented in Academia and the MSM, as well as certain precincts within the Democratic party) faces existential danger from several directions. They are overtly threatened by Islamic fascism, which hates almost everything they stand for, notwithstanding the uncomfortable alliance of convenience between some on the far left and the Islamists. The threat to Western Civilization, which supports them and nourishes so many on the left, even those who have the most animus toward it, is real and even when denied, is ever-present. Another threat is more subtle. There has been a trend away from the ideas that the Left has championed, and which have been on the ascendant in the West for over 30 years, and this is reflected in the increased challenge to the MSM opinion makers from the Internet (which is actually more economic than political) as well as the weakening of the baseline support for the Democratic party in a country that to many appearances has been becoming more "red." On yet another level completely, there is the sense of dynamics let loose in the world which are unsettling all "verities." Jobs can no longer be counted on as lasting for a lifetime, technology is advancing so quickly, with new dangers almost everyday, that it is hard for people to maintain their equilibrium and there is an uncertainty to the future that involves much more than the threat of further terror. Change is difficult and the Iraq war has offered a convenient issue around which the anxiety over the multiple paradigm shifts (military, political, cultural, economic) can coalesce. Optimally, we would recognize each other's stake in the outcome, work together to find least bad alternatives and struggle to maintain rationality in the face of such existential anxiety.

Unfortunately, when the Affect Storm hits, there is no discussion, no ability to reflect or question, and all we can do is wait until it passes.

Those who see the War as the an endless disaster will see evidence to support their position everywhere and some will have an anxiety driven need to attack those who would raise questions about their certainty. The same can be said of many supporters of the War, but in my experience, there is a good deal more nuance and willingness to debate and discuss on the right, the middle and some sections of the near left than can be found on those at the 20% left. The comments from yesterday have done nothing to alter that perception.

Comments

Affect Storms

Early in my carer I treated a man who had significant issues with hyper-sensitivity. He felt easily criticized and took offence easily. At the same time he was extremely insensitive to the feelings of others and was typically completely unaware of how he hurt the people who cared about him. After a couple of months of treatment, I thought our therapeutic alliance was strong enough to tolerate a more pointed interpretation. In the middle of a session in which he was bitterly complaining about his current girlfriend, that she was mean to him because she kept complaining he was insensitive to her, I ventured the comment that perhaps there were something he had done that she misinterpreted as critical of her. I thought this would be an opening for some self-reflection by my patient; I was wrong. After a moments silence, he exploded at me. How could I be so stupid as to think he was insensitive; if I agreed with her why did he even bother talking to me about it. He was loud and insistent. He barely took a breath and did not allow me to intervene. I had nothing useful to say to him and nothing I said could have nay value. He was enraged and distressed.

I realized that there was indeed nothing I could say that would calm the turbulence; all I could do was sit tight and wait for the storm to pass. When a hurricane hits, you don't continue trying to renovate the house, you batten down the hatches and wait it out. (Sorry for the mixed metaphors.)

As time went on we were able to understand what had triggered the "Affect Storm." When I made my extremely mild critical comment, it threatened to take down the entire edifice of self-esteem that he had constructed to protect himself from deep-seated feelings of worthlessness and despair. Criticism form people he didn't care about bounced off his fortifications, but he had let me inside the front door, inside his defenses, and a criticism from me shook the foundations. He felt a moment of pure terror and then went on the counter-attack as if his life depended on it; in a way, at that time, his psychic integrity did depend on counter-attacking. In retrospect, the episode proved to be quite educational to both of us; at the time it was quite harrowing and distressing.

I was reminded of "Affect Storms" by some of the responses to my post yesterday.